Spring Road Trip Part 2 Hood River

When the photographer is the driver it makes for fewer trip pics but the memories are better than the pictures anyway.

We had originally planned to take some trips earlier in the month but due to illness, kids schedules, and weather the trips didn’t materialize until this past weekend. The Salem trip was down and dirty, fast over (mini breakdown midway) and fast back. Not the long leisurely weekend we had originally planned and have since moved out to mid May. Sunday came and we were without a girl child still (her BFF’s 16th birthday bash was this weekend) and JP was all road-tripped out. Rob and I had the day to go out and explore! Going to Salem had been JP’s choice, my choice was The Dalles/Hood River. I had to log in to work for an hour Sunday morning, do a little beta testing on an upgrade, and then we could motor on down the road.

We knew it was going to be nice, but the gorge is a windy place and we dressed for warm but windy. That turned out to be both good and bad – good that I was protected from the sun (I did forget the sunscreen) bad that I was a touch too warm most of the day. We drove up through Madras and the traffic was very light, heading down into Maupin I fully expected to see rafts on the river with the sun out and so bright and cheery – but the recession has hit that industry too, it appears. We stopped on the river at the city park – too much coffee before we left the house – and looked at the sun on the water, smelled spring (and livestock!) in the air and watched the hawks lazily spiral up into the bluer than blue sky.

Have you ever made that trip? You climb and climb until you get up on the ridge above the lower Deschutes then the zigs and zags down to the river, then you start climbing up and up again. Between Maupin and The Dalles is nearly an hour of driving up. When you reach the highest point of the drive it’s only 3000 ft elevation, still lower than Bend, but it feels like you’re very high indeed in the High Desert of CO.

Tighe Valley was as green as emeralds, the hay and alfalfa growing in the fields already lush and verdant. We made a lot of bad jokes about Dufur as we drove past. It’s so cliché that Oregon has a town called Dufur. You might be a redneck if . . .

Actually, we did drive into and through Dufur once – mebbe 5 years ago – and that is a sad little town. The agriculture around it appears to be stable and growing but the little town is dying from the inside out. New business doesn’t thrive around a population of 500 when travel is easy and a town of 15k is just 30 minutes away.

Driving into The Dalles it was wonderful to see the apple orchards all a bloom. My grandparents (great and grand) had orchards – but theirs were full sized trees allowed to grow as nature and their own inclinations took them. Huge and sprawling apricot trees, apple trees, pear trees and in the case of the plum ‘trees’ they were more like big sprawling bushes that sort of creeped over everything. The apple ladder that I used to climb as a child was 10 ft tall and I wasn’t allowed to climb the top rungs that would reach the ripest apples at the top of the tree. Up on the gorge the trees have been bonsaii’d to such a degree that they are these little dwarf trees that grow no higher than a man with a step ladder can reach. Each branch off the trunk is carefully pruned to such an extent that only one or two fruits are born per stem and each stem is the healthiest on the main branch/trunk. The trees, even in full bloom, look very sparse until the leaves have unfurled for the summer. I like The Dalles, it reminds me very much of eastern Oregon towns. A little town with a lot of history of sweat and hard work and tears to build a bustling outpost on the edge of the desert; it has a very practical sense of self. That wasn’t our destination though. Nope we were off to Hood River and Blossom Fest 2009.

I’ve mentioned before that my knee is shot, yes? Bone on bone when I walk on uneven ground. So what possessed me to tromp around on foot through the steep hills of Hood River old town?? I dunno, just stubborn I guess.

We parked not far from Full Sail Brewing and made a plan to go for the tour there in the afternoon but on the list first; lunch. We knew we wanted to sit in the sun and enjoy the spring heat and the blossomy fragrance of the air and watch people. The little place called 3 Rivers Grill seemed to fit all of those requirements nicely.

Rob ordered the lamb Schwarma and I had the curried chicken salad. The curry was sweet and light and absolutely no heat. Dammit. Not curry. More like turmeric and coriander chicken. Very pretty, very sweet, not at all what I expected. But the atmosphere was lovely, there were some really interesting people walking, talking, laughing, pontificating, whispering, jogging, climbing with obvious effort, and just sitting and soaking up the sun. Very nice lunch.

We shopped, I bought more beads for jewelry, admired the really clever open air shops (a lot of them have sliding glass doors that are floor to ceiling along their shop fronts? They slide open the whole front of the shop, very cool), people watched some more and took the tour of Full Sail.

Here’s a fun factoid about the northern Oregon border. A ton of people that work on this side of the river live in Washington state. Why do they live there and work here, do you ask? No property taxes in Washington; lower income tax in Oregon. Sneaky devils aren’t they? I thought of that for two reasons, one, Randy the tour guide at Full Sail commented on the inadvisability of a work place habit by saying ‘Labour & Industry would not approve’ and that is a very Washingtonian ting to say. Oregon doesn’t have a Division of L&I – we have SAIF, but because I work for a Washington based corporation myself, I know the term, L&I and recognized Randy for the Washington cross-over that he is. Two, I’ve been listening to a lot of OPB radio lately, that’s how we learned of the Blossom Fest to begin with, and they air a lot of Washington based news as well as Oregon. They talk as if events and politics in Washington matter to Oregonians. Not to Central/Eastern Oregonians, certainly, but to the Border folk like P-Town, Hood River, The Dalles, etcetera, it sure does.

We wandered around a bit more, then drove up into the Heights and admired the gorgeousness that is Mt Hood from the orchards around Hood River. Another interesting factoid; we saw several businesses that referenced Mt Hood and Mt Rainier, Double Mountain Brewing was one, but when you are actually in Hood River, you can only see the tip top bit of Rainier peaking over the ridges on the Washington side of the river.

We left town around 4 and headed back up I 84 but jumped off the exit at Mosier. I wanted to drive the old Highway again. The Scenic Gorge Hwy was built during the depression. Another FDR job booster to get families back on track. My grand dad Mark worked on that one too. The Lodge at Mt Hood and the Scenic Highway. It gives me a warm feeling to look at what his hands helped to create. We stopped a few places along the way, including the overlook at Memaloose.


Ack – there is a lot more to tell but I’m off to lunch now – we’ll have to pick up this thread later.